Our Literary Exercises for the Sun

For those of you who read this blog and do not use the MFW curriculum, on day 6 of each lesson, the focus is on literature.  They give several literature selections. They ask that you pick one to read and do the corresponding activities.  We are going to strive to do as many of the selections as we can because they are GREAT selections (a lot of them classic books) and the activities all look like a lot of fun!

(And for those of you who don't use MFW maybe you could get some good ideas to do with your children from these posts.  Since I am only giving major highlights from each book, if you would like to have more information on all the activities that we did for a certain book just ask...I would be more than happy to share with you :-) )

Since we had to condense this week due to mine and hubby's weekend get-away :-) we divided the books over a few days.  They gave 3 selections this week so we did a book a day for the last three days of our lessons.

What The Moon Saw by Brian Wildsmith

This was a book about opposites.  We discussed the opposites in the book and made an opposite book using index cards.  Seth had a lot of fun of this.  He liked thinking of the picture he wanted to draw.  I drew an example on the whiteboard that he followed to draw on his cards.  It turned out really cute!

Bear Shadow by Frank Asch

This was a book that I personally bought and I am so glad that I did because the boys loved it and were excited to know that it was a book that they could pull out and read whenever they want!  :-)

In this book Bear is mad at his shadow and tries several ways to get rid of it.

The activity that we were suppose to do was to go outside and play with our shadows.  Well, the day we did this book it was raining cats and dogs outside!  But that's ok!  This momma knows how to adjust (or is successfully learning how to adjust would be a better way to say that - HA!).   We did this book on the same day that we did our globe and flashlight experiment so we already had a flashlight in the room!  So we turned off the lights and pretended the flashlight was the sun!  I was able to move it in different angles to change the size and shapes of our shadows, just like the position of the sun during the day changes the sizes and shapes of shadows.  Now when I pointed the flashlight straight down it didn't completely take away the shadows but Seth was still able to grasp that there was a point in the day, at mid day, when there would be no shadow due to sun being directly above us.

We also used our flashlight in our dark room to help us act out the story.  Seth absolutely LOVED pretending to be bear while I read the story again.

We also took a sheet of paper and Seth drew out his favorite way that Bear tried to get rid of his shadow, which was when he tried to nail it to the ground.

Regards to the Man in the Moon - Ezra Jack Keats

We checked this book out from the library but we are going to have to find our own copy!  Seth loved this book. A little boy builds a spaceship and pretends to go to space.  Seth has a huge imagination and this book was right up his alley!

After reading the book we talked about what parts of the book were real and what parts were pretend.

I asked Seth if he could build a spaceship how would he build it.  He told me he would go to his daddy's shop and get some blocks and nails and a hammer to make the spaceship.

Then I had him draw a picture of his spaceship (I am really trying to encourage him to draw...his mind is so full of so many ideas and imaginations and I would love to get a glimpse at some of them and feel like he could really do well with drawing.).  Seth drew his spaceship and then I told him to draw where he would be in his spaceship.  He drew the earth, Saturn, Mars and Pluto.  (it helped that the night before he became absolutely fascinated with a book he found on his bookshelf about space and planets!  He actually told me those were the planets that he would see...he remembered the names of the planets!)  The drawing is in the picture above.

Hubby and I will be out of town this weekend.  He told me that he wanted Granny to read the book to him again this weekend and he wanted her and him to make a spaceship together.  They should have a lot of fun!